The Lazy Guy’s Guide to Dating

What women really want (hint: it's your sweatshirt).

“Now that’s a sweater I can make a long-term commitment to borrowing.”

There are plenty of websites floating around that will provide fashion tips for the more metrosexual among us. They recommend things like vests and bow-ties and well-tailored suit jackets, which I suppose do look rather impressive as you talk to your date about your 401(k) and your fancy job in the oil and gas industry, but you'll have to excuse me while I fall asleep in the ranch dressing.

Do you find yourself getting turned down for a lot of second dates? It’s probably because you aren’t dressing for success. Take these real fashion tips, determined by an actual female and verified using advanced emotional calculus and statistical analysis.

Wear a baggy sweatshirt.

This is the most important thing you’ll be providing to your female partner over the course of your relationship, so it’s important that she sets eyes on it early. Imagine all those fall football games and bar patios and long walks that turn chilly before you’re ready, forcing you to take succor in each other’s bodies.

Chances are your date is going to forget a jacket and ask to borrow yours. Show up in the sweatshirt she will eventually make hers in order to show what a great provider you can be for her. And when she does ask to borrow it, don’t get mean and bossy but remember that men expect us to shave off a large percentage of our body hair and thus really can’t complain when we inevitably feel a chill.

Cargo shorts are key to a woman’s heart.

Mostly, she wants you to hold her keys in your pockets. And her Chapstick. And her cell phone, but if it vibrates will you return it? She’s in the middle of a conversation with her best friend and noooo, Chelsea isn’t more important than you, but she’s going through a breakup and she needs a friend!! Sure, it is a rare woman indeed who only has one purse, but it’s so much easier if you’ll just agree to carry all of her stuff around for her.

Shoulder pads are back! (But only for guys.)

Here’s the facts: girls like guys who are good at cuddling. We get together in groups after a relationship has been established, and there’s only one word on our lips: cuddles. We gab for hours. What positions did you cuddle in? Spooning? Reverse-spooning? Butt to butt? Head on shoulder? Something weird where your thigh is around his neck, and then he’s also holding you around the waist, and then your head is propped up on his calf, and everything feels really good? If you’re not good at cuddling, the relationship is never going to work out. Why jinx it? Slip in some shoulder pads and you'll have a broad, Gaston-from-Beauty-and-the-Beast frame to properly support your paramour.

Let your reflective sunglasses do your work for you.

Obviously this girl that you’ve taken out for drinks or dinner or a romantic walk along the beach is incredibly beautiful. But unless you’re willing to spend the evening telling her she’s beautiful, chances are she’ll freak out halfway through the date about a loose strand of hair or whether or not her lip gloss is smeared. A nice pair of reflective sunglasses takes the pressure off of both of you. You can reduce your compliments to one every ten minutes, and she can relax and listen to your totally awesome story about spring break with the guys.

Accessorize with a Moleskin notebook.

Hemingway wrote in Moleskin notebooks. What a better place, then, to record all of your notes about what your female dating partner has to say? In the same place that Hemingway penned his notes about the tragic relationship between Catherine Barkley and Frederic Henry, you can record the information that this delectable female in front of you is really interested in humanitarian work, likes corgis, and has seen the movie Sixteen Candles, like, a hundred million times.